The Caffeinator

Portland’s best new coffee shops and trends.

If you can’t find a place where everybody knows your name,
at least find one where they know your coffee order. Mine’s a
macchiato—but everyone at my local knows that. They also know what I do
for a living, where I live and where I grew up, and have met my parents
(I’ve met some of theirs, too). Some might find their “Cheers” in an
actual bar, but I, like many Portlanders, spend far more time in a
coffee shop. For the past 2½ years, it has been my neighborhood watering
hole, the one place I can always find a community of like-minded folk,
shitty Wi-Fi and a friendly ear for $3 plus tip. I’ve watched people
build small businesses, create art, celebrate birthdays, write novels,
study for college, flunk out of college, cry, sing and sleep. At the
same time, those people have given me more than my fair share of story
ideas, taken part in my impromptu focus groups, lent me hundreds of
power cables, shared food, fixed my bike and listened to me talk hours
and hours of total bullshit. They’re all my friends—even though I don’t
know all of their names.

We’re living in the
best coffee city in the country. It’s easy to become complacent about
that, when swinging by the cafe down the street for a single-origin
cold-brew sweetened with agave nectar and served in a biodegradable cup
alongside a laundry list of tasting notes is everyday. But if any one of
the 11 new cafes we’ve reviewed in this year’s coffee issue
opened in just about any other city in the country, it would instantly
be the best coffee shop in town. In Portland, we barely raise an
eyebrow: “Oh, another small-batch third-wave roaster in a bike
shop/refurbished warehouse/NRHP-listed storefront? Whatevs.” In fact,
when faced with a cup of one of the finest coffees on the planet, we
dunked a Grape Ape doughnut in it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t—in
fact, I recommend trying all of our doughnut-and-coffee pairings. Just spare a thought for those less fortunate in, say, Pittsburgh
or Phoenix. If you do want something to gripe about, marvel at our
dearth of coffee beers here (the humanity!) or the lax
environmental rules that allow our beloved artisan roasters to pump
filthy fumes into the air here.

Next
time you drop in to that local coffeehouse for a quick Gibraltar and an
organic vegan scone, take off those Rose City-tinted glasses for a
minute. We’re not just lucky to be drinking some of the country’s best
coffee made by some of the country’s best roasters and prepared by some
of the country’s best baristas. We’re lucky to be doing it in these
little communities all over the city, where anonymous new friends lend
us power cords and listen to our bullshit.